Annan appeals for help in global AIDS fight

WASHINGTON -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sought the Bush administration's help Wednesday in paying for a multibillion-dollar program to fight AIDS in Africa.

The administration is considering an initial pledge of $200 million to the global AIDS fund. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Tommy Thompson, secretary of health and human services, are considering trips to Africa to see firsthand the devastation wrought by AIDS on the continent.

The secretary-general, who met Wednesday with the two Cabinet members, is seeking the help of rich nations in developing a $7 billion to $10 billion fund. Of 36 million people around the world infected with HIV, roughly 26 million live in Africa. The virus has killed 23 million people worldwide, including 17 million in sub-Saharan Africa.

Powell said the meeting was ''excellent'' and that the administration might have more to say about Annan's request later in the week. Annan did not comment as he left the meeting.

Thompson, in a statement after the meeting, said, ''We plan to work aggressively with the international community, as well as communities throughout America, to prevent and treat AIDS.''

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Bush would meet with Annan on Friday. So far, she said, there is no exact dollar figure for a U.S. contribution to the global AIDS fund.

Amid the U.N.'s struggles to help the infected in Africa and prevent the disease's spread, AIDS in Africa has emerged as a foreign policy issue for the administration.

AIDS activists have charged that the administration is paying more attention to the worldwide problem rather than looking at it as a domestic issue.

Last month, Thompson defended the administration's decision against increasing funds for popular AIDS treatment programs such as the $1.8 billion Ryan White project, while concentrating on developing vaccines at the National Institutes of Health research centers. The NIH budget includes $2.5 billion for HIV and AIDS research.

''We think that is a much more important place, because we got to have that vaccine in order to control this epidemic that's going around worldwide,'' Thompson said.

''What we have to do is we to develop a Marshall-like plan in order to do something about the prevention problem and come up with a way to curtail the problem in Africa,'' he said.

The world's response to AIDS in Africa has grown. For instance, drug companies from India and the United States have cut the cost of expensive drug therapies prevalent in richer nations so Africans can better cope with AIDS.

The NIH on Wednesday also outlined a global health research plan for fighting AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Annan has appealed to wealthy nations to help build a fund to fight AIDS, malaria and other killer diseases. He said fighting AIDS, especially in Africa, is critical to cutting the number of people living in abject poverty in half by 2015.

Annan will return to Washington on Friday at Bush's invitation for a joint meeting with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria to exchange ideas on how to deal with the AIDS problem including a proposal for a global fund to combat the disease, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

A special session of the U.N. General Assembly on June 25-27 is hoped to focus a global spotlight on the AIDS pandemic.

On the Net:

National Institutes of Health Office of AIDS Research: http://www.nih.gov/od/oar/

This article published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Thursday, May 10, 2001.